Exploring Amsterdam

Last Thursday, we visited the Tuschinski Theater, with the exchange students. Catherine, our Dutch guide, but fluently speaking English, toured us around the building while talking about Abraham Tuschinski, the movie palace, and the recent restorations. Two days later, I would visit a packed main auditorium for Tarantino’s newest, Inglourious Basterds.

On Friday, we visited the Amsterdam City Archive (Stadsarchief), where architect Maarten Fritz passionately talked about the difficult restoration of this deco styled, massive building – a former bank. It was intriguing to see how decorated the former bank vaults were and how inventive the architect’s crew had been in restoring and reconstructing. After that, our group splitted: half of the group went to Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, the only ‘dependance’ of our museum for modern art that’s open now – we are all anxiously waiting for the main building to be reopened. I was with the other half of the group that visited Huis Marseille, where managing director Els Barents talked about the old 17th century canal house, the museum for photography located there, and recent developments in artistic photography. All in all a nice day: education and entertainment.